The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  The fifty men to attack the boat had been trained carefully. They knew not to bunch together, they knew to run as hard as they could for a thirty count, lift their crossbows and start firing, regardless of anything else happening.

  There would be three or four boat guards, Ezra had told him, another couple of guards on the fort wall. Firing against running men, they’d be lucky to hit once. Moreover, any of them who fired when their attackers were far off were out of the fight, as it took them almost a minute to reload. In that time the crossbow men would get off four shots, and after that, three to the defender’s one.

  Once everyone on the boat was down, the attack group was to topple to the ground, looking like they’d been shot, and play dead after that. If nothing else, Melek thought, they’d be harder to hit.

  “One minute,” the sergeant announced. “They are just beyond the surf line.”

  Melek psyched himself up, trying to empty his mind to prepare for what was next. Ezra’s two friends, the gunners, took shells and stood with them, near their weapons.

  Belatedly, Melek checked his crossbow. He didn’t want to pull the trigger and have it flap uselessly. It was ready. So was he.

  It was supposed to be a good thing if the men of the garrison sortied to help either their comrades in the boat or to attack Ezra and his friends. Every man outside of those walls was at a greater risk of being killed than those inside it. He could only hope.

  “Ten seconds,” the sergeant called, his voice as calm now as it had been ten minutes before.

  Finally, it seemed like the last few seconds flashed. “Go!”

  The sergeant had spent long hours with Ezra and Jake, Ezra’s cousin. The word “Go!” was the signal for the sergeant to fire one of their thunder rods, and it roared, firing fifty rounds in just seconds. Ezra had said to have no faith in it, that the man didn’t have enough time to learn any skill, but Melek could hope. “Stay down, stay ready!” He told his men.

  The tubes a few feet away coughed, and the men firing them reached for more shells. A moment later another of Ezra’s friends was passing corrections to the guns. He too was hiding behind one of the bushes.

  The Sea Fighter sergeant slid down into the gully, a huge grin on his face. “I got half! I swear it, Melek! Half went down in heaps!”

  As if to emphasize that, he heard the first snaps of crossbow strings. There had yet to be a firearm fired, except the one. He was stunned. They faced no resistance?

  Even as he thought that, there was a smatter of shots from seaward, and one or two from the fort a short breath later. Something hit the ground above his head and made a shockingly awful sound as it buzzed away.

  “It’s called a ‘ricochet,’” Ezra told him. “As bad as they sound, they’re worse if one hits you. The bullet is all messed up, and does a lot more damage.”

  Melek nodded. In the distance, he could hear a creaking sound over the noise of the latest explosions from Ezra’s guns.

  “Ready,” he said, suddenly feeling calm and steady. There was a solid slam of shots from the Tengri. “Up and at them!” he commanded.

  He couldn’t let them go up by themselves, so he went up and over the wall of the ravine with them.

  The crossbows made a solid racket as men fired when they found a target. There was a column of about forty Tengri that had gotten out of the gate, with more coming behind them.

  The crossbows swept them like a breath of wind moved grain. They were two hundred yards away, and Melek wondered how it was that they could get so close without discovery. The sun appeared solidly from behind the Big Moon and he could hear alarms from inside the fort.

  “Two more volleys, men!” Melek called. “Do not advance! Kill them, then get into cover!”

  Some men ran forward, heedless of the orders. At least three of them, Melek saw, were Dralka. Why not? What honor did such as them have?

  Another volley lashed out, and the twenty additional men that had come out of the fort also withered in the fire. Some of them fired in Melek’s general direction, but he saw none of his men fall. “One more! Then down!” he screamed.

  He fired his second quarrel into the mass of men and then went full length on the ground. “Down!” he shouted as loudly as he could, his voice riding above the sound of the battle.

  From the fort one of the cannons fired. It was, after a fashion, poorly aimed, only hitting men on the far left. Yet, six men were there and six men jerked and spun as if they were on strings -- before dropping dead.

  He crawled backwards, down into the ravine.

  Ezra walked up to him and smiled down at him. “How are we doing?”

  “We killed a lot of them coming out from the fort,” he managed.

  “I meant the boat, the ship,” Ezra said patiently. Melek wanted to cry. He’d never looked!

  “I didn’t see.”

  The Sea Fighter went up the wall of the ravine, back to his bush.

  “Everyone at the boat is down and either dead or feigning. The ship was hit once early and it’s been hit other times. Ah! Two more hits! It’s burning!”

  A roar of cannon came from the ship and cannon balls hit above them. The Sea Fighter sergeant slid back down. “Wow! I don’t want to do that again! Ezra, that ship is burning well. In a few minutes, they will start jumping off. This is no place for us! I saw hundreds of men aboard!”

  Ezra nodded and gave the word. Melek looked. Only about a third of the shells had been fired.

  “How many men do you have left, Melek?” Ezra asked.

  “Forty, I think.”

  “Two shells each this time, and hustle back to the others.”

  Melek passed the word, slung his crossbow over his back and picked up a shell and hurried east.

  There were occasional shots from Ezra’s cannon, hardly any from the fort. He gripped Collum’s hand when the two men met.

  “We succeeded, Sachem!”

  “And we’re making progress. We knocked out two of the guns, but they’ve brought two more around. But they can’t hit us, and after what you did at the gate, they aren’t trying to rush us.”

  “The ship is burning, the boat crew was killed, at least most of them,” Melek reported. “The survivors from the ship may try to attack.”

  Ezra laughed, a few feet away. “They might try, but their weapons don’t like water. Get them wet, and they won’t shoot. Anyone who carried away a musket from the ship would have a useless weapon. From what you’ve said, they’ll likely attack with axes.”

  Collum passed the word, and General Laim took two hundred men west, towards the sea.

  * * *

  Kris stopped when her radio chirped, and she lifted it out of her pocket. “Kris, go,” she said.

  “Ezra. We have a little situation here,” he told her.

  “What kind of a situation?”

  “We sank the large warship and killed most or all of the boat’s crew. The smaller one hauled off out of range of the mortars. I don’t want to waste more mortar rounds on the fort, because we can’t see inside and have no way to know if we’re doing any damage.”

  “Okay,” Kris said cautiously.

  “I was thinking of going for a big score,” he told her.

  “Big? As in how big?” Kris asked.

  “We’re going to burn their crops in a bit when it gets darker. I had two hundred mortar rounds to start with, I have a hundred and twenty now. I’m willing to part with half to convince them to leave the arsonists alone.”

  “Okay,” Kris said, still cautious, “But I’m not following this.”

  “Yeah. Well, those guys in the fort have no place to go. If they leave the protection of the walls, they’re dead meat. Stay, and they starve.”

  “The cavalry could always come,”

  “Kris, your job is to put a stake in the cavalry’s heart.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Ezra told her.

  “I assume Kurt is hanging around close by?” Ezra asked her.
>
  “Right over my shoulder,” Kris agreed.

  “Kurt -- I need two simple answers. Can you guys hustle down to that headland and reach it and get set before dawn? And then, can you make sure the first couple of shells count? Right on the money?”

  “Yes and yes,” Kurt Sandusky told Ezra.

  “Good, because these ships are tinder boxes. We hit the one today a couple of solid licks and five minutes later it was burning from stem to stern. Eventually the sucker rolled over and sank.”

  “Yes and yes,” Kurt replied. “There’s nothing that shows loving, like when you care to send the very best.”

  “Good! As soon as you do that, let me know. Kris, I know this is a risk, but I’m going to give Collum and Melek their fondest desire.”

  “What?”

  “We’ll call for a truce and tell the survivors in the fort that they can go -- on two conditions. First, I want to see the splashes from the cannon on that ship as they go into the ocean. The second is that they leave their slaves behind for us.”

  Kris gasped. “Why would they do those things?”

  “Well, in about an hour, if things work right, we’re going to burn their crops and empty their lake. I have about a one hundred and twenty mortar rounds left, and I’m willing to spend half of them convincing them not to mess with the arsonists.”

  “You said that before, but still...” Kris saw Kurt nod. Evidently, at least he understood.

  “They are going to have to put a couple of hundred survivors from the larger warship, plus a couple hundred more, we think, from the fort, on the smaller ship. There won’t be enough food, Kris. They won’t have enough food. On the other hand, the captain of the smaller of the two warships is almost certainly not going to be in a position to say no if the others say yes. Getting rid of the slaves? Remember why Chaba said she ran? Her master was going to fuck her silly and then cut her throat, so he’d have more food.”

  Kris remembered that, indeed she did.

  “The thing is, Kris,” Ezra went on, “I want to use Andie to negotiate their surrender. Of everyone here, she’s the one I’m sure will say all the right things in the right way.”

  Kris swallowed. He was saying that Andie would be rude. And he was right. “And what if they kill Andie?”

  “You have to ask yourself if the leader of the survivors is more interested in killing one rude woman than saving his life and those of his comrades. Because this is the one and only time this offer will be on the table. Afterwards, the only way they’ll leave is with crossbow bolts in their gizzards.”

  “And you have good ground to fight in, right?” Kurt asked. “You have sufficient logistics?”

  “Yes and yes, Kurt,” Ezra told him. “Collum was listening to all the things we’ve been telling him. As we marched south, we lived off supplies from the most current wagon train to reach us. A new one arrived every day, and they are still coming, every day, each with enough food to feed the entire army.

  “On Earth, we can’t begin to imagine how productive this planet is. They could get four and five crops a year if they knew about fertilizer -- mostly they satisfy themselves with three. That’s three times the food grown by the average terrestrial farmer in the same time period, Kurt. Under normal circumstances, they pull people off the farms to work in the mills and smithies. Now, they are growing stuff as fast as they can and worrying about the extra labor later -- but even so, they have more people to spare for that extra labor than we would have had on Earth.”

  “So, you can indeed wait them out,” Kurt asked.

  “That’s a roger.”

  “Well, I tell you true, I sure hope you sneak a radio into the negotiation, because I’d pay real money to hear Andie Schulz stick it to these assholes.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. You have to get in position, Kurt.”

  “No problem, Ezra, trust me.”

  Kurt turned to Kris when the radio was off. “You think we can make the headland before dawn tomorrow morning?” The headland was about two miles off and about a mile long.

  “I suspect so,” she said mildly, grinning.

  “Well, let’s not disappoint. Let’s haul buns!”

  They did, and long before midnight they were in position. About an hour before the sun rose, Ezra called. “Okay, they are short now on food and water. Are you guys going to make it?” Ezra asked.

  “You bet,” Kurt said with alacrity. “In fact, we made good time and are already in place and set up.”

  “Fine. Andie has agreed, and we’ve been going over what she should say. It’ll be light in an hour, and we’re going to give them eight more rounds from the mortars and then see what they’ll recognize as a truce flag.”

  “Okay. We haven’t heard anything from the other ship here, and Kurt says he hasn’t heard anything from the camp, either.”

  “It could be that we aimed at their antenna at the camp, first. Tsk. A stray round hit it. The larger warship was hit and burned really fast. That smaller ship... I don’t know why they haven’t transmitted.”

  Kris spoke up. “I know.”

  “Why, Kris?” Ezra asked.

  “That was one of the ships that came first, with the storm. Their transmitter was destroyed, and they can only receive.”

  “That’s a guess,” Ezra told her.

  “Yes, but it could also be why they always kept her here. If that ship can’t transmit, you have to make sure that no transmitter gets aboard. Because if they can’t transmit, their home won’t know what’s happened here for months and months.”

  “She’s right, Ezra,” Kurt told him. “We’ve never detected a transmission from the smaller warship. Wouldn’t that be cool! Starving and no way to send out for a pizza?”

  “Something like that,” Ezra told him.

  Kurt pushed his earpiece into his ear, and lifted his radio. “This ship just sent a message,” Kurt told Ezra. “See if there is a response from the surviving ship there.”

  Ezra came back a minute later. “Nothing. There’s not much going on aboard her. A number of men are sleeping by the guns, but nothing special.”

  “Well... we’ll just have to see. I can’t imagine a sea captain worth his salt who’d sail all this way and then turn around and go home without at least making an effort to find out what’s happened.”

  Kurt lifted a pair of binoculars and looked east. “Nothing.”

  “There wasn’t anything last night, either,” Kris told him.

  “Never trust the other guy to do what you expect or what you want,” Kurt told her. “Even on their bad days, they want to look busy for the bosses.”

  * * *

  Andie Schulz purely hated having to hide in the bushes. Still, she understood that none of them, not even Collum or Melek, knew the proper way to call for a truce with the Tengri. A grizzled veteran sergeant, one with ships on both hands, went out waving a white flag.

  No one shot at him, and he approached the walls of the camp and called to them. “Do any of you understand me?”

  A lone voice, heavily accented, replied, “Yes, barbarian.”

  “My leader wishes to speak with your leader. We will meet, four of us from each side, down by the water there,” he pointed towards the remains of the large warship. “If you can, have the captain of your surviving ship join us.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  “You can try again.”

  “And what could we possibly get from you that’s worth our time?” the voice continued.

  “Your individual lives. If you wish to die, we have no problem with that either. Simply indicate that is your wish, and march out of your gate and we will promptly comply with your desire.”

  “I could kill you where you stand.”

  “No doubt. However, there are three thousand men surrounding this miserable collection of huts now, and more coming. You might kill me, but then three thousand of them will kill you and all the rest. I understand you brought women and children.”

  “What we
brought is no business of yours, barbarian.”

  “You insult me. Perhaps you would like to line up here and meet the fate we would so dearly like to give you?”

  There was moment of silence, which Andie assumed meant the speaker was consulting with someone.

  “How do we know you won’t betray us?”

  “Because we will send our greatest war leader to talk with you,” the sergeant said, seemingly unfazed and unflappable.

  “Very well,” the speaker said. “We’ll come.”

  The sergeant spoke just to Andie. “I’m pretty sure he’s lying.”

  “And you were telling the truth?”

  Andie climbed up and a moment later Rari joined her. Andie reminded the young man, older than she was, one last time. “Whatever you do, do not let them even suspect you understand a word they say -- even if you hear them tell their guards to kill us. It might be a trick.”

  “Yes, Andie,” Rari told her humbly. “I won’t forget.”

  “Good.” Andie hefted the P90 she carried and patted her purse that had a half dozen extra mags. Even poor Rari had some extras under his shirt.

  The Sea Fighter sergeant joined them, along with a Sea Fighter private who simply surfaced from the ocean, where there had been no hint anyone was present seconds before.

  Four men came out of the fort and walked down to the water’s edge to face Andie and her three escorts. “Which of you is the war leader? What is a child doing here?” said the one who could speak halfway understandable Arvalan.

  Andie in turn waved at the surviving warship, which had edged closer while waiting for the truce party to form. It was about three hundred yards from shore.

  “We need the commander of the ship,” Andie told the man. “Tell him to come now.”

  “Do not talk to me, child of slaves!”

  “Listen up, asshole,” Andie told him. “I want someone off that ship. Tell them to send someone.”

  “No.”

  Andie cupped her hands. “Ahoy the boat! You have one minute to send a representative to these talks!”

  Andie waited patiently and after a minute, she turned to the Sea Fighter sergeant. “I don’t see any movement, Sergeant.”